Search All 1 Records in Our Collections

The Museum’s Collections document the fate of Holocaust victims, survivors, rescuers, liberators, and others through artifacts, documents, photos, films, books, personal stories, and more. Search below to view digital records and find material that you can access at our library and at the Shapell Center.

Videotape testimony of Felicia H., who was born in Chełm, Poland about 1920. She recalls Polish restrictions on Jews; her parents' decision and attempts to emigrate; moving to Warsaw in 1938; her father's departure for Bolivia in April 1939; German bombing of Warsaw on September 1; returning to Chełm with her mother; ghettoization; the role of the Judenrat, for which she worked; and transports of Jews to Sobibor and Majdanek. Mrs. H. describes hiding during the final liquidation; separation from her mother; traveling to Zakopane, then Kraków; obtaining false papers using the name of a Polish woman from Chełm; working for an S.S. officer whose wife knew she was Jewish; discovery and having to return to the Kraków ghetto; and deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau. She details life in Birkenau; the importance of helping each other and a sense of humor; her mother's words that "it would all be over someday" to which she attributes her survival; transport to Ober Alstadt; and liberation. She remembers returning to Chełm via Ostrava; animosity of the people in Chełm; learning of her mother's death; contact with her father in New York; living in Stockholm; and emigration to the United States.

Learn about over 1,000 camps and ghettos in Volume I and II of this encyclopedia, which are available as a free PDF download. This reference provides text, photographs, charts, maps, and extensive indexes.